IoT devices are physical objects that may communicate on a network, and may include sensors, actuators, and other input/output components, such as to collect data or perform actions from a real-world environment. For example, IoT devices may include low-powered devices that are embedded or attached to everyday things, such as buildings, vehicles, packages, etc., to provide an additional level of artificial sensory perception of those things. Recently, IoT devices have become more popular and thus applications using these devices have proliferated.
Various standards have been proposed to more effectively interconnect and operate IoT devices and IoT network use cases. These include the specialization of communication standards distributed by groups such as Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the specialization of application interaction architecture and configuration standards distributed by groups such as the Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF). An example of using IoT technology is in a roadside network that may assist automated driving.
Vehicular communication systems, such as vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and infrastructure-to-vehicle (I2V) communication paradigms, have been proposed for use with cooperative intelligent transport systems (ITS). These systems may extend the visibility range of vehicles beyond what expensive sensors mounted onboard vehicles may achieve. Cooperative ITS may be implemented using Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) or cellular-based communication (LTE).
In Europe, a reference ITS communications architecture has been specified by ETSI. This architecture describes the architecture elements, such as central, vehicle, and roadside units, as well as the protocol stack, management and security services. This reference architecture, however, does not specify any specific roadside network architecture implementation.
Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC), is another alternative communications architecture, where latency is minimized by moving the processing elements as near as possible to the mobile users for applications using the cellular network.
Past and present trials and research projects on DSRC V2X (e.g. simTD, Pre-Drive C2X), cellular V2X (e.g. CoCar, ConVeX, Towards 5G, 5GCAR) and hybrid V2X (e.g. Converge, METIS, UK CITE) aim to implement a proof of concept to evaluate the feasibility of cooperative ITS.
Vehicular ad-hoc networks are not able to guarantee a minimum level of visibility range beyond the vehicle's sensors; thus, these networks may not provide a suitable solution for highly dependable communication of environment data. Neither ETSI MEC, ETSI ITS, nor 3GPP 5G standards aim to address the implementation aspects of roadside networks, and thus do not provide reference designs for particular use cases, such as the optimized provision of environment data to vehicles on the freeway.
Both DSRC and sidelink cellular-based V2X, defined in 3GPP LTE Rel. 14, are limited in the maximum visibility range. Furthermore, they only address the communication aspect and thus would rely on ad-hoc networks to obtain the environment information. Thus, these wireless communication systems are only a part of an ITS solution for automated driving.
Existing field trials on V2X communication have been limited to a static network of road side units (RSUs) that have not been designed to guarantee an extended visibility range of vehicles with the dependability requirements of automated driving, and are unable to dynamically adapt to changing road scenarios that have different requirements.